Paradox Moon: The First Book of Regenesis Read online

  The band thoroughly reconnoiters the ground along the valley’s rim, searching for a way down to the raging river far below.

  As they do, the man pauses to survey the breathtaking enormity of the chasm. He can barely make out the opposite edge, so wide is it, and the depth greatly exceeds the valleys he has seen so far on the journey. So vast is this place it rivals the Grand Canyon he visited as a child in his own world.

  But unlike the reddish-brown hues of the Grand Canyon of his youth, this valley boasts every color of the visible spectrum, from brilliant red to deep violet. The yellows, blues and greens, in particular, are so intense they sting his eyes. It is as if some surrealist artist has put the Grand Canyon on canvas and literally splashed it with every vibrant color in her palette.

  The man is startled from his thoughts by a cry from one of the band. The leader rushes over and together they point to a way down from the rim to the distant valley floor below.

  It is a meandering route, with many stops and starts, and will take them perilously near the angry, crashing cataract at the raging river’s source. However, the leader does not hesitate but motions the band onto the dangerous decline, and the man dutifully follows.

  Leaving the high desert above, the band follows the downward path to the first obstruction, an elevated accumulation of large boulders blocking the way entirely. Here, the man thinks, is where their journey along the path must end. He sees no way around or through the highly piled rocks.

  The leader does not hesitate as, in the same motion the hunters employed to leap upon their finned prey in the cove near their polar valley home, members of the band spring upward to the top of the pile and disappear over its far side. Nor do they pause to help the hapless man over the heap.

  In the wake of the faint, fading footfalls of the departing band, the man realizes he is, once again, separated and alone.

  He does not realize that, while the furry bipeds offer protection against any active threat, they cannot relate to a passive challenge like the path’s rocky barrier or to the man’s inability to surmount it. If the man does not follow, the band regards his absence as his choice, not theirs.

  So, they continue on their way. While the stranded man is at a loss for what to do next.

  That is a choice that will be made for him.

  Peering at a rocky outcrop next to the trail, the man is surprised to see a large boulder next to the canyon wall shift slightly. At first, he thinks he is imagining it, but then the stone moves again.

  Reminded of the moving wall in the narrow valley and of the tentacles that reached out to seize him there, the man slowly backs away and hefts the short-handled axe in his hand. As if in response, the boulder moves purposefully until a narrow entrance is exposed, leading to an open cave beyond.

  No fearsome creature springs from its depths. The man approaches the entrance to see what manner of cave it reveals. All he finds is a vast, empty tunnel leading downward from the rocky prominence of the blocked pathway.

  Entering the cave, the man finds the air fresh and invigorating.

  He is startled by the loud clap of the boulder shifting shut behind him, sealing off the outside world. His caution is overcome by the spellbinding beauty of the stony cave.

  The walls glitter with light-emitting geodes of every color. It is as if the vivid valley beyond has turned inside out, with all its stunning colors reflected in the crystalline facets of the geodes.

  As the man follows the tunnel downward, he feels like he is walking inside a rainbow.

  But to what end? he wonders.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The small band continues the descent along the valley’s path. Aware the man has abandoned them once more but only briefly remarking the strange creature’s quirky habit of disappearing for no apparent reason.

  Soon, they reach the thundering cataracts, and the leader halts the band to rest. His eyes search the area for a way down and around the falls to the valley floor below.

  Exhausted, the rest of the band curl up against the valley wall and soon are fast asleep. As darkness descends, the leader joins his fellows, and they spend the night roosting on the bluff at the end of the path.

  They awaken in a shower of rainbows, as the early rays of two rising suns catch the prismatic clouds of dew-like steam. Rising from the base of the falls to envelop the waking travelers.

  Refreshed and alert, the leader espies a narrow slit in the valley’s rocky face only feet from where the band slept. It is a feature that escaped notice in the deepening shadows of dusk and in the leader’s numbing exhaustion the day before.

  The slit is a narrow cleft in the rocky surface beside the path, and the leader quickly discovers it is wide enough for him to enter. Once through, he is standing in a downward-sloping corridor that is dark as night.

  The leader returns to the narrow opening, beckons the band, and soon all are plodding down the rocky decline of the pitch-black corridor. After a blind and lengthy trek, they approach a distant and growing light ahead.

  Soon, the entire band stumble out of a rock-strewn opening into the welcoming light of day.

  They are on the valley’s ocher floor. While they cannot see the river, all hear its rage. Walking toward the crashing din, they come shortly to the edge of a deep channel whose depth and width contain and intensify the fury of the racing river. Gazing in awe, the leader traces the course of the flow until it narrows to a single point of movement in the far distant reach of the valley.

  But his immediate attention is drawn to a much closer geologic feature.

  A short way from the falls lies an eddying pool of placid water. Resting in a wide concave depression worn into the bedrock by the ageless pounding from long-gone cataracts. The ancestors of those that crash nearby.

  And in that pool are the crisscrossing fins of the band’s familiar prey.

  It is mere minutes before the band is again feasting on fresh-caught flesh. The leader leans back, sated and content, to carefully survey the valley around them.

  They are in a very deep place.

  Looking up, the leader’s eyes climb the valley’s wall until it disappears from sight, so distant is its rim. The riot of vivid color stretches upward from the valley’s ocher floor, as its walls project vibrant rainbows from their shimmering mineral surface.

  But the leader takes scant notice of the valley’s beauty.

  His focus is on a more practical object: finding a way through this deep valley so the band can resume its journey across the high desert on the other side. The violent river is broad and impassable, and the leader resolves to follow its bank toward the far end of the valley.

  In hopes of finding a way out.

  Chapter 9. Mermaids of the River Caves

  Following the bright light of a thousand geodes, the man climbs downward, ever downward, mile after mile, toward a deep and unknown destination.

  The ventilation is constant and encouraging, as cool fresh air washes over him. The man is reassured he at least will not suffocate as he plunges ever farther into the deepness of the world.

  After many hours, the man’s strength flags. He sits down to one side of the corridor to rest. Almost immediately, he is fast asleep.

  The first intimation the man is not alone in that endless geode-lit corridor is the gentle touch of soft, silky skin upon his bare arm. Looking up, he beholds the sylph-like image of a wispy nymph floating in air above his outstretched legs.

  The diaphanous figure beckons toward the downward direction he has pursued. As he looks ahead, other nymphs emerge from the corridor’s stony surface to beckon him as well.

  Theirs is a comforting presence, in his loneliness, and he responds to their insistent plea with an affirmative nod. Their broad, warm smiles gladden him. He is eager to follow where they will.

  His head is still nodding when he awakens. Alas, the smiling fairies are gone, a mere ruse of his imagination.

  Consuming another of his remaining MREs, the man rises and trudges on fart
her into the depth. It is not long before he discerns the unmistakable gurgle and gush of rapidly moving water. He wonders what new dangers lie ahead.

  Suddenly, the corridor opens onto a damp, level plateau of rock overlooking an immense karst of limestone caves.

  Like the circulatory system of some complex, living organism, it is part of a vast network of swiftly flowing, interconnected subterranean rivers. Some flow openly as far as his eyes can see. Others disappear abruptly into the solid stone.

  But that is not what captures his attention.

  Perched on a series of smaller plateaus are the ghostlike figures that beckoned him in his dream. Rubbing his eyes, the man looks again. This time, they do not disappear.

  Astonished, he sits on the front edge of the plateau, legs dangling over the rapids below, and studies the improbable figures.

  Whereupon one of the naiads slips from her perch and swims lazily to a placid pool of backwash next to the roiling rapids.

  The man lifts his hand in greeting, and the nymph smiles back. But when he speaks, the nymph remains mute, responding only with the silence of her smile. As he turns and moves toward her, she appears frightened and swims swiftly back to her plateau.

  Then, suddenly, the naiads all turn as one and splash into the water—disappearing into its depth.

  Determined to know more about the elusive sylph-like creatures, the man decides to maintain his vigil until they reappear.

  He stakes out a flat area at the back of the plateau where a rocky overhang affords him protection to the rear. That is where he will bed. Since water is everywhere in this subterranean realm, he wonders only if there is food to be had.

  That is when he notices a small fin breaking the surface of the placid pool the naiad so recently vacated.

  Hopping down onto the rocky edge of the pool, he reaches into the water and pulls up a fish. Sitting at the edge of the plateau, he unsheathes his knife and quickly scales and filets his catch. Then, like dining at a sushi bar, he eats the raw, delicious flesh and is full.

  That is when he makes a careless and nearly fatal mistake!

  Using his knife, he scrapes the fish’s scales, bones and entrails off the edge of the plateau into the rapids below.

  Immediately, the swiftly flowing water begins to boil as a host of flying creatures erupt from its surface, snapping at the air to trap the falling scraps.

  These are not the fish the man captured in the pool. They are torpedo-shaped engines of destruction, with long and lethal rows of razor-sharp teeth designed to seize and shred living flesh. They remind the man of the barracudas he has seen on vacation in the tropics of his world. He is thankful for the vicarious nature of this first encounter with them here in the bowels of their world.

  He resolves to keep a respectful distance from the edge of open rivers and rapids in this place.

  How, he wonders, have the naiads survived these treacherous, carnivore-infested waters?

  That is a question that will go unanswered, and not because the smiling figures are mute. It is because, despite his patient vigil, after many stretches of alternating sleep and wakefulness, the naiads fail to reappear.

  Finally convinced the figures were an artifice of his imagination, the man gives up the vigil and begins retracing his steps back up the geode-lit corridor toward the valley floor above.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The band makes it only a short distance before both suns disappear beyond the valley’s rim and darkness catches them. The next day, rested and refreshed, they continue to follow the river until night falls again.

  On the morning of the third day, the leader awakens to discover they have made little or no progress since leaving the thundering falls. If anything, the far end of the valley seems even more distant than when the band started its journey. And, paradoxically, the falls have faded to a faint blur in the other direction.

  It seems while they have put a great distance between themselves and the falls, they are no nearer the valley’s farther end.

  Day after weary day, the band trudges on in the direction the river flows, but always with the same result. Each time they awaken, the end of the valley appears no closer, although the falls have vanished into the lengthening shadows behind them.

  The monotony and sense of futility are heightened by the total lack of any feature between the river’s bank and the valley’s high wall. The ocher floor of the valley is totally flat and smooth, devoid of any surface irregularity or other living thing.

  Daunted by the mind-numbing sameness of this endless valley, as the band settles down for yet another night’s rest, the leader resolves to begin back-tracking to the falls as soon as they awaken the following day.

  That is when everything changes.

  Chapter 10. The Great Magma Mines

  As he treks forlornly along the same way he has come, the man is surprised at the changed appearance of the geode-lit corridor. Its walls are riddled with wide, open vertical folds. He is confounded by their very different texture from the smooth stone surfaces he traversed on his way here.

  Approaching the nearest fold and examining it by the light of nearby geodes, he is even more surprised to feel a gentle wash of wind wafting from behind the ridge of rock.

  Moving toward the source of the stream of air, he discovers what the fold is concealing from the corridor’s view: an aperture leading to the other side of the wall.

  Caution yields to curiosity as the man squeezes through the opening and steps into a narrow cave beyond. With no geodes to light his way, the man finds himself in utter darkness. After blindly feeling his way along for a short distance, he decides to double back and resume his journey through the lighted corridor he so recently quit.

  But as he mulls his decision, two unexpected developments change his mind: the faint sound of rushing air and the weak glow of ambient light, both in the distance ahead.

  Still feeling his way along the narrow cave, he continues in the direction of the light and sound, as both continue to grow stronger. Finally, he comes to an abrupt bend in the tunnel. Turning into it, he is shocked by the scene opening before him at the end of its short stretch.

  Stepping out onto an elevated ledge, the man beholds the great magma mines described by the voice in the tower as the engine of a once great civilization’s rise and of its ultimate fall.

  Unlike the hell-scape he traversed in his flight from the nest of the tentacled beast, he faces an open vista of rock ceiling above stony walls reaching down to a flat, solid terrain. With elevated embankments tracing the course of great rivers of flowing magma. High cataracts of showering water rain down on the molten river, creating great swirls of roiling steam. Which trail away into wispy mist that swiftly vaporizes in the super-heated air rising from the rivers below.

  Here are the great rivers of magma, flowing the width of this hidden domain.

  Here are the cooling pools of its constituent mineral elements at alternating heights and intervals.

  Here are the vast veins of black coal lacing the ceilings and walls.

  The man is stunned by the immensity of the mines, a space so vast that it seems an entire world unto itself. It is an endless vista of white-hot molten rock flowing through a concavity of red and yellow rock veined with a spidery pattern of jet-black lace-work.

  Focusing on the flat spaces and embankments, the man surveys the terrain for evidence of unnatural presence. For relics of the lost civilization that once worked and harvested these mines. To his surprise, he finds . . .

  Nothing!

  There are no neat, geometric roads or pathways.

  There are no bits or pieces of idled machinery.

  There are no abandoned tools or conveyances, no stray shovel or ore-cart.

  There are not even any bones, as there were in the tower, to bear silent testimony to a fallen race.

  It is as if they were never here, in this place.

  Yet, the absence of any trace evidence of their presence fails to shake the man’s fai
th in the voice from the tower and the tragic history it revealed.

  Exhausted by his long trek from the river caves and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the magma mines, he sits down on the ledge, his back to the solid wall. Consuming another of his MREs while reviewing his situation and options.

  He knows he must quit this sterile place, the source of ancient corruption and death. So, he resolves to make his way back to the geode-lit corridor and continue his ascent back to the outer world.

  After resting on the ledge, he re-enters the blackness of the narrow cave, only to stumble into the geode-lit corridor after a very short distance. The folds of stone have disappeared, and he rejoices he is back in the tunnel that led him to the river caves so many days ago.

  He does not know that this is a different corridor. Or that his misdirection will lead to the furry band’s salvation.

  After yet another uneventful night, the leader awakens to the first appearance of a broken landscape since leaving the falls behind those many days ago. And for the first time, the valley’s end appears closer. So close, the leader can see the raging river’s end as it flows into a deep, narrow gorge out of sight.

  The floor of the valley is strewn with curious, blood-red boulders of uniform size and shape.

  Each is perfectly smooth, with a convex surface at its top and two rounded sides, each exactly like the other. So identical are the large rocks they share a symmetry and sameness the leader finds unnatural and disconcerting.

  Waking the other members of the band, he points out the river gorge in the near distance and beckons his two fellow hunters aside.

  The far wall of the gorge is a blank face of polished stone. And above its rim, there is a rising bank of fog condensing off a great curtain of geyser-like fountain. But the fountain is not falling back into the ocher-floored valley.

  In fact, it does not appear to be falling at all!

  The appearance of the narrow gorge and the unnatural rise of water above it changes everything.